Que Cera - Michael Cera interview

After shining in Juno and Superbad, Michael Cera has his first starring role. So how did a quiet young Canadian conquer Hollywood? Interview by KATRINA ONSTADE

A MICHAEL CERA JOKE IS NOT A joke at all. Often the laugh comes at the end of the sentence, when Cera's words have slowed to a dribble, leaving an emptiness filled only by his blank Pez-dispenser face, which is the real punchline.

In Cera's roles as a devoted baby daddy in Juno and a thwarted party seeker in Superbad, his muted comedy was his signature. But in real life the dialed-down persona is a little unnerving. Jason Reitman, who directed him in Juno, acknowledges that a chat with the laconic Cera can be off-putting. "Good luck figuring him out," he says. "I met him when he was 16 and wondered, 'Is this some kind of bit?' But he's totally sincere, totally kind and inscrutable. He's the dark matter of the universe."

Cera, 20, turns up to our meeting at the Toronto International Film Festival sporting a bright red backpack, his cords hiked high and belted on his hips like a drawstring bag. He comes off much like the type of adorable kid eccentric he often plays, a role he will need to age out of if he wants to sustain his career, though maybe not quite yet.

"This is my mom," he says, as an attractive blonde woman waves from the hotel room door and vanishes. He sits rod straight and uses the phrase "I don't know" 48 times in one hour. But perhaps the vagueness is intentional, a polite statement of self-preservation as his latest feature, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, nears its US release date.

"I don't really want to be famous, and I'm kind of scared that might be happening," he says. "I might really have to stop and think before I make decisions now, and see how they're going to affect my life, and see if it's what I want to be doing with my life. I guess I need to make sure that it's worth all that comes with it."

If "it" is celebrity, then "it" is already in motion, and his first official turn as leading man won't halt the acceleration. In this indie variation on a John Hughes movie, his Nick is a jilted high school bassist and Kat Dennings's Norah is the infatuated stranger compelled by his mournful homemade CD mixes. One night the pair zigzag through hipster New York seeking a secret rock show and falling for one another.

By the time the shoot began on the streets of New York in November, Juno had earned $143 million (£79m) and Superbad $121m £67m). Cera was suddenly a star, and fans interrupted filming, shouting "Hey, Superbad!" Cut to September 2008: The premiere in Toronto drew a mob, with weeping girls extending phonecams as Cera, asparagus thin and smiling nervously, walked the red carpet.

"It's been an intense year for him," Peter Sollett, the director of Nick & Norah," says. "The thing people love about him is he's very open and sensitive, and I think he doesn't want to change, but fame inspires change."

Cera is in a continuing struggle with recognition. "It's so strange that people might hate me who have never met me, like people writing on message boards," he says. "I'm most recognised for Juno. I don't know if it's good or bad." There's a long silence. "I think I would have been just as happy if it had just made back what it cost."

Cera's celebrity is compounded by the internet, and small-screen success suits his style: he's a kind of comedic miniaturist. He co-wrote and starred in a web-only show for CBS called Clark and Michael, playing (in a rare jerk role) one of two clueless young actors trying to sell a series in Hollywood. His face is a YouTube mainstay, popping up in dozens of clips, like the self-help parody Impossible Is the Opposite of Possible (1.5 million views). His fictional firing from Knocked Up – he plays himself as an incredibly entitled actor – is one of the most popular downloads out there. But in movies he (like Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill) telegraphs a softer brand of comedy, in which the nerdy guy does the right thing and gets the girl.

"In the 1970s and 1980s, comedians reacted to the Sid Caesar era with a down-with-the-system attitude," Reitman says. "But in modern comedy there's a return to sweetness. It could be a reaction to the violence and darkness of Tarantino that the indie has gone vulnerable. It's a great moment for Michael Cera, a good Canadian boy."

CERA GREW UP IN BRAMPTON, Ontario, a small community outside Toronto. But unlike Nick and Norah, who feel the bright-lights pull of Manhattan from New Jersey, Cera never hoofed it to Toronto for the urban night life. In his young-curmudgeon way he recoiled at the suggestion: "I can't stand bars. It's too loud, and I get paranoid with a lot of people around. People are obnoxious in bars. They try and take your picture. There's no discretion."

Cera's parents worked for Xerox when he was young. After thriving in a local improv class, he began auditioning for commercials and Canadian television while attending a big public high school. After moving to Los Angeles with his mother, he landed the part of the youngest member of the wealthy Bluth family on the absurdist Fox comedy Arrested Development.

"He has a sharp sense of subtlety," says Jason Bateman, who played his father on that show. "He really trusts that the audience and the camera are watching. The only time I've seen directors giving him notes is when they ask him to do more, and it's usually because that director has a more sophomoric sense of humour than he does."

Cera does not employ actor-speak to explain how he works. "Sometimes you just know when something isn't ringing true," he says. "I like subtlety. I like broad. I just watch people. I've learned a lot on sets."

He admits that, like many former child actors, he is often more comfortable around adults. While filming Nick & Norah he lived in an apartment in the East Village near the home of Sollett and his girlfriend. Then 19, he had never lived in New York, and he would call the director with questions about where to get toothpaste and if it was safe to walk at night. Sollett showed him Nick's favourite clubs and bars, though Cera rarely ventured inside beyond filming. His idea of a good time in Los Angeles, he says, is a restaurant with friends, or a bike ride.

While the man-children of the Judd Apatow clan are in their mid-20s – Rogen is 26, Hill 24 – Cera has always been the child-child in the group. One wonders how that innocence will play out in his adulthood. "At some point the audience may want something different," Bateman says. "But I think there's a misconception that he's not acting." Maybe, he suggests, Cera needs to play a tough pimp "to show that he's not just talented by accident".

Yet Cera seems less like a hot new Hollywood property than a young boho guy exploring his options. He recently got his own apartment in Los Angeles after years in hotels, and he has a short story coming out in McSweeney's, Dave Eggers's literary journal. He talks with something resembling excitement about the band Bishop Allen and the cult comedy series Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! (though unlike most fans, he has appeared on it). He is finishing the music for Paper Hearts, a partly fictional, partly documentary film about the meaning of love that was written by, and stars, Cera's girlfriend, Charlyne Yi, a comedian who has been compared to Andy Kaufman but is best known as the stoner chick on the couch in Knocked Up.

This fact is of interest to the female fans who have turned Cera into an unlikely sex symbol, the ultimate pin-up for Lisa Simpson's imaginary Non-Threatening Boys magazine. "I don't – I can't – that's ridiculous," he says when the subject comes up, reddening a little.

With his highly tuned emotional receptors, it seems fitting that Cera names Garry Shandling and Woody Allen as two performers whose careers he admires, men who operate a little outside the fold. Insiders who feel like outsiders, they have also made a living off their discomfort, collapsing the distance between who they play and who they are.

But he's not worried about being typecast. "I have no plans," he says. "I might just try to lay low, or recede. I don't want something not to happen in particular. I'm just taking it slow."

• Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist is released in the UK in January. Juno is available on DVD now.